By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
There is a Kashmir of numbers- half a million soldiers, a hundred thousand killed, thousands disappeared, hundreds of militants; and then there is a Kashmir of people- people with names and faces, with hopes and aspirations, with pains and sorrows, and with past and present. Basharat Peer, a Kashmiri journalist, in his book “Curfewed Nights” reveals this second Kashmir that ironically, even with Kashmir always being in the news, few know about.
Many, in the rest of India, wonders why Kashmiris in spite of getting special treatment (treatment like non-Kashmiris not allowed to buy land there, subsidized food items, etc. ) by the Government of India, erupts in violence at what seems to be on slightest pretext.
To understand endless cycle of protests and violence in Kashmir, one has to travel with Basharat Peer down his memory lane to the beginning of insurgency and also to the present-day Kashmir to see the effect of that insurgency and what Indian response to that insurgency has done to this valley.
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Book: Curfewed Night Author: Basharat Peer Publisher: Scribner Year: 2010 |
Book is divided into two parts of eight chapters each. First part titled “Memory” deals with the author’s own experience growing up. Through his eyes we see first moments of public protest that started with 1987. Peer’s story is not very different that other Kashmiri children’s growing up in that turbulent times. He talks about surviving cross fires, mines, and protest rallies. Schools that were partially occupied by the armed forces putting students lives at risk and schools that were bombed by the militants. He talks about fascination that militants generated among the Kashmiri youth. And action of these militants and Indian forces and how fearful for their lives entire population of his village had to take shelter in a near-by village.
Second part is titled “Journyes” and traces author’s footsteps as he travels to rediscover and understand Kashmir. His journey takes him from one-room home of a Kashmiri Pandit living as a refugee to Line of Control where farmers’ lives are threatened by frequent shelling by Indian and Pakistani forces. He meets people who have been tortured by Indian forces and former-militants who are now abandoned by the movement that they thought they were serving. One also meets people of courage, who in spite of their bleak past, working to make their present better and hoping for a brighter future.
Author Basharat Peer [TCN Photo]
Written beautifully, these true stories engage the reader to begin to understand what is happening in the valley and how it is affecting the lives of ordinary people. These are ordinary tales of ordinary people living in extra-ordinary time in a prized land. Peer, in just over 200 pages, is able to capture the whole complexity of the problem and gives us human faces and their stories so that we can begin to look beyond the numbers and politics. Among these faces are not only Kashmiri Muslims but also Pandits and members of armed forces that serve there. In this tragic story he is able to narrate tales of love, happiness, friendship, enmity, and also tales of hopes, ambition, and desperation.